What should Indy do to confront surge in violent crime? Here's what you said

Indianapolis has been plagued by a rash of violent crime in recent weeks.

Star readers have had a lot to say in recent days about the outbreak of violent crime in Indianapolis, including the spike in homicides. Here's a sample of comments, which have been edited for clarity and grammar:

From Twitter

?@mitwee1We need more officers on the street, it's the number one deterrent!

?@caseybaksa More community events and focus on job creation. People with nothing to do are much more likely to commit a crime.

On Facebook

Nathan Lucas: This is above and beyond all else, a parenting issue. These kids are taught not to trust officers, and they pass that distrust down from generation to generation. They are taught to despise anyone who has worked hard and has nice things to show for it. They are conditioned by the welfare system to think that you can get something for nothing. Why work, when you can steal what someone else has worked for? Their parents aren't making them go to class, aren't involved in making them do their homework, don't care what their grades are, and certainly aren't hammering home just how important an education is for your future.

John Kelsey: The root causes for the inner city violence are many. Expect more police to make more arrests - but that will not fix this problem. Education, safety, nutrition, birth control, personal responsibility, addiction, more jobs, health care, elimination of gangs, and parenting have to be addressed. In my opinion, focusing on only one thing will not work.

Stephanie Marshall: What about holding parents responsible for their kids until they graduate, so they have a better chance of getting a job? Use some of the budget to train them to be mechanics, plumbers, computer techs.

Letters to the editor

Stop subsidizing pro sports, and hire more police: Over the past five years, no one on the Indianapolis City-County Council has been more publicly critical of Mayor Greg Ballard than I. I have disagreed with a great many of his policies and methods. Yet, I was the lone Democrat council member to vote to sustain Mayor Ballard's veto of the proposal to divert $6 million in public infrastructure funding to shore up public safety efforts. Such an apparent about-face deserves a public explanation.

Indianapolis is indeed in the midst of a public safety crisis, with murders mounting and our police force ranks continuing to shrink. I believe we need more officers overall, particularly patrolling the streets. However, before we can appropriately remedy the officer shortage, it is important to understand its origins.

Why are we so short-handed police officers? Simply put, recruitment has not kept up with the growing needs of our city and the retirement of veteran officers. So why then wasn't money spent to ensure adequate numbers of police officers? Simply put, money was spent on other things, namely so-called economic development.

Over the last few years, through the use of the Downtown TIF district, tax abatements or direct cash payments to a few and select number of private companies, luxury apartment developers and professional sports teams, hundreds of millions in public tax dollars was diverted from essential city services, like public safety, parks and public transportation.

We shouldn't have to forgo important neighborhood services, such as public infrastructure, to provide others essential services, like public safety. Instead, the city simply needs to get out of the "business" of subsidizing particular private businesses, including Indy's pro sports teams. Doing so will free up tens of millions dollars annually. That's more than enough to fund an adequate police force and perhaps even rebuild our parks and public transportation.

Brian Mahern

Council member, District 16

Indianapolis-Marion City-County Council

Adopt New York City's 'adopt, frisk' policy: Law enforcement authorities in our city need to consider the New York Police Department's "stop, question and frisk" policies as one of their tactics to deal with the frightening murder rate in Indianapolis. After adopting the policy, the murder rate in New York City dropped by 80 percent, and that city is now safer than Boston or Washington, D.C.

The noble attempts to reform the perpetrators of crimes by organizations such as the Ten Point Coalition need to be supported and funded, but these are long-term solutions. For now we need to take the guns out of the hands of those unruly youths roaming the streets and invading the malls. The "stop, question and frisk" policy will not necessarily require additional officers on the streets, just different tactics. And please, let's not call it racial profiling. The truth is that most of the shooting suspects are young black males, so they will end up most often stopped, questioned and maybe frisked. But it is also true that most of the victims are minorities, so they will be the biggest beneficiaries of the safer city.

Sophie Boguslawski

Indianapolis

Blame parents for violence: A group of unsupervised teens numbering 50 who ruined our city's Fourth of July means a group of parents numbering 100 are failing to do their job. It is not the city's job to parent. Someone needs to point out the pattern emerging in Downtown violence so this community stops blaming the city for failing, when in fact, the problem is obvious.

Marc Sinnock

Indianapolis

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What should Indy do to confront surge in violent crime? Here's what you said

Star readers have had a lot to say in recent days about the outbreak of violent crime in Indianapolis, including the spike in homicides. Here's a sample of comments, which have been edited for